calimac

"I went to a rather unusual holiday choral concert," I said to the people at the local SFnal social gathering. "They played a Requiem."

And not one of the usual Requiems, either, I might add: Antonín Reicha's Requiem. Which meant that I could spend most of my review describing the unknown work, instead of evaluating the performance, which was ... pretty good. I can't sell a two-word review.

The work was unknown to me, too, which is one reason it was hard to evaluate the performance. Reicha's Requiem, or properly his Missa pro defunctis, is said to have influenced Berlioz's, or properly his Grande Messe des Morts, a generation later. But I don't hear it. Reicha's work is classical, dark certainly, dramatic at times but gentle, and layered. Berlioz wrote one that's stark and blocky. With its hollow-harmonied, unaccompanied brass chorales and the chorus barking out the text, it sounds more like an Ode to Stalin than anything else I know pre-dating the Soviet Union. This one is nothing like that.

"Are you sure it counts as a holiday concert?" asked the Plain People of Fandom. I think so. It was advertised as one, and it also included excerpts from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which must count for something.

On the next night I went back to Stanford for a newish student orchestra, the Stanford Philharmonic. Not an amateur group as the name might suggest, it's the product of a music class as the Stanford Symphony is, but it's smaller with an emphasis on less grand repertoire. The Stanford Symphony has often been good, but the last time I heard them, playing Brahms, I tried to ignore the less-than-wonderful sounds coming off the stage and imagine the platonic ideal of the works instead. But this Philharmonic concert had what I wanted: a quite charming performance of the Bizet Symphony, with a particularly entrancing slow movement, and a more than adequate Mozart "Paris" Symphony. Also a tiny flute concerto by Cécile Chaminade.